EUROPE. The European Travel Retail Confederation (ETRC) has named Tallink Grupp Member of the Management Board Piret Mürk-Dubout as its new Vice President Maritime Affairs.
Mürk-Dubout, who oversees the travel retail division (among other roles) at the Baltic Sea company, also joins the ETRC Managing Board and Supervisory Board (the latter through her presence as alternate member of the Nordic Travel Retail Group).
She will use her experience in the maritime sector to support the confederation’s action plans with a stronger focus on cruise and ferry retail. She brings to the boards a strong background in customer experience, retail operations and partnerships, alongside “a passion for sustainability, innovation, partnership building and future trends”, noted a statement.
ETRC President Nigel Keal said: “I am delighted that Piret has accepted to join the Managing Board of ETRC as Vice-President Maritime Affairs. ETRC will greatly benefit from her unique expertise in the maritime sector and maritime airport retail as well as her background in airport management. Ferry and cruise retail are very important channels for European travel retail and I am glad that this is now fully represented at ETRC Board level thanks to Piret’s presence.”
As member of the Management Board at Tallink Grupp, Mürk-Dubout has responsibility for international sales, marketing and customer services in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia and Germany; travel retail, Tallink Duty Free and ecommerce; the development of onboard services, food & beverage concept development, entertainment development and group sustainability.
She said: “I’m honoured and humbled to take this role to represent the maritime industry and the cruise and ferry businesses in this prestigious confederation. We must continue to work hard to adapt to the transformation and changes caused by the COVID pandemic to reach the revenue and passenger number levels we were used to pre-pandemic.
“We are taking many steps to modernise and improve customer service and experiences by developing different travel retail services, including digitising and personalising customers’ choices and experiences. We want to work even more closely with our partners and new consumers with the aim of maintaining the travel retail sector’s uniqueness of assortment and to ensure that the travel retail offering in itself is something special, bringing customers on board.
“There are many challenges ahead of us, arising from the pressing and urgent timescales of the green transformation and the goal to continuously reduce our footprint and negative environmental impact working with our partners across our value chains.”
Before joining Tallink Grupp, Mürk-Dubout was Tallin Airport CEO. She has worked in many leading positions both in Estonia and Sweden, including VP, Director of the Business Development area for Telia Group in Stockholm. She has also worked as a Management Board member of Telia Estonia and as a member of Management Board at EMT, was Communications Director at Elion Enterprises and Strategy Lead at Eesti Telekom.
She has also previously held in public relations at the Estonian Ministry of Internal Affairs, as a member of the editorial team at Estonian National Broadcasting current affairs and news team, and was also a CNN news correspondent, among other journalistic roles.
*In January Tallink Duty Free gathered business partners to celebrate the launch of its new MyStar vessel and the opening of 2,500sq m of retail space onboard. Click here for highlights. ✈
